RIP Rameses XVII

Seems that all the news from the college sports world is coming out of UNC's Chapel Hill these days. Yesterday, the campus celebrated the announcement that Tyler Hansbrough was returning for his senior season. Darn - I was really looking forward to another overblown alumn of a North Carolina school sitting on a bench somewhere in the NBA (see JJ Reddick)

Today's news is a little more somber. Rameses XVII - the goat mascot of the UNC's football team, has passed away from a mortal head butting from his son, Pablo. This doesn't sound like an accident to me. His son was the Rameses XVII's heir and now takes on the name of Rameses XVIII. What makes this even more disappointing for the fans of this ACC football powerhouse is that pops was the best kicker on the UNC football team and his son is academically ineligible. Sources say that the football team is busy recruiting a kangaroo at the local zoo to take Rameses XVII roster spot.

Gloria's World Village and the Current Global Food Crisis

Let's face it... when you live in Western Kentucky, your restaurant choices are pretty limited. Sure, you have no problem finding a good Mexican place to eat and honestly I have never seen a oriental person in our Wal Mart but there are 2 Chinese restaurants in our town. Seafood? Fried catfish - not exactly something you would find in the middle of the Atlantic.

So it was a great suprise when someone told us of a Indian/Thai place 25 minutes from our house. When we lived in Maryland we fell in love with Indian food and just couldn't believe we had something that close to us and had never heard about it. So this weekend we stopped by Gloria's World Village on the campus of Murray State University. It was fantastic!

We had the opportunity to meet the owners who are wonderful people. Gloria was called to be a missionary as a young child after she saw a vision feeding hundred's of children from different countries. After spending most of her adulthood living across the US, her husband and Gloria settled down in Murray, Kentucky. While here they began to host foreign students. In 10 years the had over 100 students live with them. About that time the opened up this restaurant so these students from all over the world could have a place to eat that was familiar to them. They also have a grocery store with mid-eastern food for sale in the back of the restaurant. The vision that she was given had become a reality!

Being on a college campus and selling food that most students won't eat in the first place is not an easy thing to do. Gloria and her husband live on the 2nd floor of the restaurant. What is making it even more difficult is the food shortages that is being experienced throughout the world. The cost of rice - a staple in most of the world - has risen 50% just in the past few months. Gloria does not want to raise her prices but may have to.

Please keep Gloria and her husband in your prayers. Please remember the impact on this crisis on other Christian organizations that are in Third World Countries trying desperately to feed and share the gospel.

A Gay-Christian and his Biblical hermeneutics

Have you ever heard of Azariah Southworth or The Remix? Me neither. But according to this brief description I found, apparently he hosts a weekly half-hour music show where he hangs out with Christians artist "reality style". The only website I could find for them is a Myspace page.

According to a new article on The Christian Post, Azariah can no longer live a lie and has announced that he is a gay Christian. To quote Southworth from the article, "I know I will be cut off from many within the Christian community, and if so, then they didn't get the point of the life of Christ," and later "I hope that they (Christians) don't do that, because that is not who Jesus was at all." He also said, "His closest friends were the prostitutes and the tax collectors and the sinners. They were the low-life people of that time. So I hope they(current Christians being judgemental) don't do that." While I encourage you to click-through and read the entire article in The Christian Post, realize that Southworth "came out" in an interview with Out and About, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender magazine based in Nashville. He says that he was inspired to "come out" by Ellen DeGeneres, a popular talk-show host who also announced she was gay many years ago.

A couple of observations that I would like to make:

1) I hate it when people try to create all these little sub-classes of larger groups to differentiate themselves. Gay-Christian? Is that supposed to be like Italian-American or neo-conservation Republican? Do we really need more labels to create divisions? Is it any wonder that no one can get along when everyone is out there joining sides?

2) When trying to justify your position that you can be gay and a Christian at the same time are you really doing your cause any justice by comparing "gays" to prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners as friends of Jesus like Southworth is trying to do? I am no true Bible scholar, though I play one on AM Static, but I think Jesus clearly defined his relationship with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners in Matthew 9:11-13:

And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" When Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. "But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."

So- rather than Jesus' closest friends being prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners like Southworth stated he seems that Jesus actually had a burden for SINNERS to come to REPENTANCE. Rather than reading a Scripture and adding your own commentary to make it fit your lifestyle, use Scripture to understand Scripture! I see this as a huge problem today where people want to be "spiritual" rather than Godly and twist Scripture to fit there own sinful
lifestyle. FYI- Southworth does claim to be a follower of Jesus and attends three churches in the Nashville, TN area one of which is led by a gay-partnered pastor.

3) Homosexuality is a sin no greater or worse than prostitution, heterosexual sex outside of marriage, or martial infidelity, period. We need to stop letting politicians make gay issues (marriage) a wedge issue, when they themselves have no problem running around behind their husbands or wives and visiting prostitutes. Just like Southworth, I suspect that many people attend different churches and read different books until they find one that allows them to live their life, as is, without the call to repentance that Jesus mentions.


CC

Quick Funny

As I was clicking through the depressing stories in my Google reader, trying to find something worth mentioning on the blog... I came across this funny picture.

If that earthquake comes a rock'n...

Well, that little earthquake you may have heard about on your mid-day news or on that internet website just happened to take place almost in our backyard.

It was interesting because I woke up - not startled - but enough to know that the bed was slightly rolling back and forth. And for some unknown reason, perhaps it just wasn't that noticeable, I didn't react like I thought I would react. I didn't jump out of bed or even say something to my wife. She popped her head up but she says she doesn't remember anything.

I fell back to sleep and it still hadn't fully registered in my head that we had just experienced an earthquake. But I do remember thinking to myself what I would do if we did have an earthquake... how would I respond? What kid would I grab first and where would we go?

It wasn't until this morning when I got into work and somebody asked me about the earthquake did it finally realize what had happened last night.

It was one of those moments you won't forget.

My commitment to You...

I admit that I am failing as a blogger. I have plenty to say about multiple subjects, but I cannot seem to focus, pick a topic and blog away. That being said I would like to let you know what I have been looking at over the last few weeks. It is not a complete list, but it is a start:

• Recent story about a girl that died while her family prayed over her rather than seeking medical treatment.
• The Pope and his visit to America.
• Muslim's plan to take over Rome, "the capital of the Catholics."
• Christians needlessly fighting with an elementary school about a "wacky dress-up week" that included "dress like the opposite sex day"
• Hannah Montana loves Jesus.
• American Idol praising Jesus.
• Crazy people everywhere killing there children. And here. And again. Or abusing them.
• The cost of divorce.

Before you say it, I know that almost all of my sources are Fox News and that make me a crazy raging conservative. I have lots of sources that feed my Google Reader, but send me any that I might miss.

I will try to start blogging tomorrow- at the top of my list and work my way down. That is my commitment to you, the loyal AM Static reader. But I would like some feedback for all the time and effort put into blogging. Deal? Deal.

CC

Bursting the Christian Bubble

Hey everyone. Sorry it's been awhile since I've posted anything. Busy with a new job, a long trip and other various excuses that you probably don't care about.

I found this article on Out of Ur. It does a great job of describing the clash of culture vs. Christianity and what our response should be.

The final session of Shift 2008 featured Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California, and regular contributor to Leadership and Out of Ur. Kimball shared some insights from this book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church.

He began with the good news—our culture is very interested in Jesus. He pulled a number of items from a bag: a Jesus bobble head figure, Jesus band-aids, a Jesus eraser, and then showed images from a Madonna concert where the queen of pop hung on a cross with scripture verses above to highlight the 12 million kids dying from Aids in Africa. Kimball says there is no doubt that people in our culture are curious about Jesus—and many find him very attractive.

Now the bad news—popular perceptions of the church and Christians are very different. Kimball showed a video of college students in his town describing Christians as judgmental, homophobic, and hypocritical. He humorously recounted the response of a girl at the health club when she discovered Dan was a pastor. She said, “Pastors are creepy” but admitted she didn’t know any personally.

This, says Kimball, is precisely the problem. In an increasingly post-Christian culture fewer people have contact with real Christians. We’ve hidden ourselves in a Christian sub-culture bubble. As a result only “the loudest voices are defining who we are,” he says. These loud and usually angry Christians are the only ones heard and seen by the culture. This is what people have based their opinions of Christians upon.

Kimball says the solution is getting outside the bubble again; obeying Jesus’ prayer for his people to not be taken out of the world (John 17:15). Only when we have real contact with people in the culture where love and friendship can be established will we change their perceptions of the church.

Dan recounted a great story from his time hanging out with the girl who cut his hair. While he was attending a ministry conference in Texas, she’d invited him to a bar to meet her friends in a band. The band turned out to be “Satan’s Cheerleaders.” Also in attendance was the Lizard Man—famous for having his whole body tattooed to resemble a lizard. Because of his friendship with the hairdresser, Dan was able to engage the group in a conversation about faith. Later he walked out of the bar with Satan’s Cheerleaders and the Lizard Man just as the ministry conference attendees were exiting across the way.

He ended with good news. “Most Christians and churches are not what the perceptions are,” said Kimball. We aren’t as judgmental, homophobic, or hypocritical as people think we are. We simply need to show them by getting outside our bubbles and reengage the culture.

Christianity in Art and Public Schools

First of all I would like to apologize for the length of time between posts- I really need to keep AM Static a priority since we have so much to talk about in these days.

That being said, I recently read a Fox News article about a high school student that received a zero on an art assignment that shows a landscape with a cross and the note- "John 3:16 A sign of love." According to the school district, every student in the class is required to sign a policy with the understanding that "prohibited any violence, blood, sexual connotations or religious beliefs in artwork." The student was then told by his teacher that he signed his constitutional rights away when he signed the policy and that his freedom of religion infringed on other students' rights.

When confronted with this policy the student ripped it up pointing out that other students had pictures of demons and other non-christian religious references and that the entire school was full of references to other religions. The student has filed a lawsuit stating that tolerance was being shown for every religion other than his. His lawyer stated, "We hear so much today about tolerance, but where is the tolerance for religious beliefs? The whole purpose of art is to reflect your own personal experience. To tell a student his religious beliefs can legally be censored sends the wrong message."

Personally, I applaud the student and wish when I was his age I would have have the courage to stand up for my faith. This reminds me of Peter and John in the book of Acts when told by the Jewish council not to speak in Jesus' name. Peter and John's answer: "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. "For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." (Acts 4:18-20) Or later when they did not comply: And the high priest asked them, saying, "Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man's blood on us!" But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: "We ought to obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:27-29).

Now, who will step forward and defend the public school system? I would also love to hear your views on the benefits of placing your child in this type of environment. Is keeping your faith quiet and following the school districts rules the answer? Is civil disobedience(and a lawsuit) the correct response? Or is getting the heck out of the public schools the best choice? Public school, Christian school, home school...any thoughts?

CC